New grant helps Pritzker launch program to reshape future of medical education

Pritzker School of Medicine students enrolled in the Foundations in Clinical Medicine practice their skills during class on the University of Chicago campus on Friday, June 19, 2015. (Photo by Andrew Nelles)

The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine will redevelop aspects of its curriculum so each student learns elements of health care delivery science, an emerging field that studies the intersection of scientific research and the day-to-day delivery of health care.

The work will be done as part of the American Medical Association’s Accelerating Change in Medical Education Consortium. The medical school is receiving a $75,000, three-year grant to implement its project called VISTA: Curriculum & Culture Change to Cultivate Physicians of the Future. The VISTA acronym stands for value, improvement, safety and team advocates.

Through the consortium work, Pritzker students will:

Learn to address and counsel patients about how to improve the value of their medical care;

Get earlier training to identify, report and improve safety hazards;

Practice working with nurses and pharmacists in interprofessional care teams;

Become empowered to be better advocates for their patients.

Many physicians don’t receive elements of this training until they begin more advanced work in clinical settings, said Jeanne Farnan, MD, associate professor of medicine and assistant dean for curricular development and evaluation at UChicago Medicine.

“Every student will be involved in this,” said Vineet Arora, MD, associate professor of medicine and assistant dean for scholarship and discovery at the University of Chicago Medicine. “The goal is not just to teach students about how to care for a patient, but to teach them about how to work in the system of health care to achieve the best care for their patients.”

Farnan and Arora, who are co-principal investigators of the grant, say the training will be infused throughout the current Pritzker curriculum, particularly in the clinical skills classes students take during their first, second and third years.